1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to fasteners or closures for shoes and particularly to fasteners for replacing shoelaces threaded through eyelets of shoes. p 2. Description of the Prior Art
Many shoes employ shoelaces threaded through eyelets in opposite flaps of the shoes to secure the shoes on the feet of the wearers. However the threading, pulling and tying of the shoelaces is difficult for many young children and handicapped or infirm people.
A number of shoe closures, such as is exemplified in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,814,085; 2,839,804; 738,399; 1,678,273; 2,637,087 and 2,867,878, have been disclosed in the prior art to replace the common shoelaces. These prior art closures generally have one or more deficiencies such as requiring the manufacture and assembly of a number of separate parts and thus being excessively expensive, requiring special tools or equipment or otherwise being difficult to install on shoes, being incapable of adjustment for different spacings between the shoe flaps so that the shoes can be fit to the wearer's feet, requiring rather complicated actions to open and close, requiring a relatively long length of longitudinal movement such as with slide closures, etc.